throws and ground work in shotokan?

[alsey]

MMA will have had an influence. it has made a lot of people realise that a 'striking art' or whatever is clearly incomplete and inneffective. however to say that because of MMA, karateka have just gone and made up grappling moves for kata is wrong.

anyone who has ever practiced modern karate must have thought at some point 'what the hell is this for' with regards to a kata movement, or some totally unecessary movement in a 'block' for example. people were thinking these things for years before MMA became popular.

nearly all (like, over 90%) of kata movements don't make sense at all without grappling or throwing. the same goes for those utterly lame 'blocks' every beginner karateka gets taught. grappling has always been there in karate, it just got forgotten, and now its been rediscovered. no doubt MMA helped many karateka to realise that something was missing, and gave the initiative to go and find out what karate is really about.

after all, karate has been in the west for only 60 years, and its taken that long to work out what on earth all those crazy kata movements are. the fact that MMA exploded around about the same time is mainly coincidence i think, though i think it has influenced karate as well.

you won't find a double leg takedown in kata because as i said in my previous post, karate was never intended for fighting other martial artists. neither will you find feints or complicated punch combos. these things aren't necessary when defending yourself against an untrained attacker.

[Yasutsune Makoto]

good post...

On a broader thought, everything that happens influences other things.

Chinese styles developed from nature, karate style developed frm chinese styles, MMA developed from cross-training, exposing weaknesses in traditional styles, causing reform in those styles and re-evaluation of techniques.

so the cycle continues.

[bushido_man96]

good post...

On a broader thought, everything that happens influences other things.

Chinese styles developed from nature, karate style developed frm chinese styles, MMA developed from cross-training, exposing weaknesses in traditional styles, causing reform in those styles and re-evaluation of techniques.

so the cycle continues.

Constant refinement and improvement should be the norm in martial arts training, and not a novelty. When the arts were soley used for fighting, things would have evolved all of the time. That is how it should be.

[rb]

Do you have a source for the relationship between judo and karate?

While Kano incorporated techniques from various sources, I am having a hard time seeing the karate. Even our atemiwaza draws from our jujutsu heritage.

As for the original question, martial arts are classified due to their main focus. Judo focuses on grappling. We have atemiwaza in our kata and even knife, sword, stick and laughably even pistol defense. It would be foolish to count those techniques anywhere near the proficiency of our core training.

Similarily, that is why karate is considered a striking art.

[Yasutsune Makoto]

I think any bio on Funakoshi Gichin should mention that he and Kano became good friends after a demonstration that Funakoshi performed, and they proceeded to learn from one another. I'm not sure that the relationship in the arts really shows the relationship of the two men. The only obvious connection, as far as I know, is that the gi and ranking system in karate comes from the judo system.

[elbows_and_knees]

nearly all (like, over 90%) of kata movements don't make sense at all without grappling or throwing. the same goes for those utterly lame 'blocks' every beginner karateka gets taught. grappling has always been there in karate, it just got forgotten, and now its been rediscovered. no doubt MMA helped many karateka to realise that something was missing, and gave the initiative to go and find out what karate is really about.

not necessarily forgotten, but likely not passed on to students for various reasons, which resulted in much of the ignorance to these techniques that you see today. For example, funakoshi taught karate in the kodokan - you know he had to have trained judo while he was there - but shotokan is notorious for not teaching throws.

after all, karate has been in the west for only 60 years, and its taken that long to work out what on earth all those crazy kata movements are. the fact that MMA exploded around about the same time is mainly coincidence i think, though i think it has influenced karate as well.

what? The concept of mma has only been around since about 1995. And regardless of how long its been here, okinawan karate has always taught its grappling side...

you won't find a double leg takedown in kata because as i said in my previous post, karate was never intended for fighting other martial artists. neither will you find feints or complicated punch combos. these things aren't necessary when defending yourself against an untrained attacker.

Not true. It's not taught because they didn't put it in the system. Judo teaches morote gari, which is a double leg. Not only that, but one of the most common street techniques you see is a tackle. Technically, a tackle and a double leg are drastically different, but in principle, they are the same.

[elbows_and_knees]

While Kano incorporated techniques from various sources, I am having a hard time seeing the karate. Even our atemiwaza draws from our jujutsu heritage.

how could you see it? seriously. If I throw a spearhand, how do you know it's a jujutsu spearhand, and not a karate or kung fu spearhand?

[elbows_and_knees]

all real fighting styles contain techniques for use at all ranges - striking, grappling, throws/takedowns, groundwork - and karate is no exception.

I disagree. you will not find ground work in any pure japanese style that I know of. you won't find ground grappling in most chinese styles either, other than dog boxing. ground striking, but not ground grappling. And I'd wager that it's not in a lot of okinawan karate either, considering the chinese influence.

karate in its old okinawan form was essentially a very efficient method of civilian self defence. the kind of situations karate deals with are the same sort of violent civilian encounters that occur today, i.e. untrained thugs wanting to hurt you for some reason or another. karate was never meant for competition, or fighting other martial artists or warriors, it was made for civilian self defence.

while it is true that karate was a peasant art, it's all they had when defending the invading samurai. Notice their weapon sets are peasant tools - nunchaku were used to shuck rice. tonfa were mill handles. Benches, Oars, etc. They fashioned weapons out of what they could.

the kata IMO are karate, not something practiced in karate. each kata contains the self defence techniques of the master who created it and is a style in itself. master motobu wrote:

"the naihanchi [tekki], passai [bassai], chinto [gankaku] and rohai [meikyo] styles are not left in china today and only remain in okinawa as active martial arts."

kata are a catalog of techniques. the aforementioned kata are what is left of those styles. kung fu is notorious for this. a master would learn a form from someone and keep it in his system to keep the style alive. Look at all of the forms in longfist. many of them are forms from now extinct styles. Also, forms make it easy to catalog a style's techniques. Yes, there is more to it than that, but I wouldn't say the the form IS the style, more that the form is the essence of the style.

motobu refers to katas as styles and martial arts; each kata is a complete self defence system in itself and so it must contain techniques for dealing with any type of situation at any range. thus each kata contains striking, grappling, throws/takedowns and groundwork. this is also supported by the old masters studying just one or two kata in their lifetime. there was no need for any more because a kata, when understood properly, is a complete fighting system.

once again, a kata is a catalog of the style. Why use multiple catalogs if I can get all I need into one? However, I disagree that kata teach you how to deal with any situation. show me groundwork in any of the heian katas...

the problem of course is recognising these things in a kata. if one has never practiced grappling, then grappling techniques within a kata will not be spotted.

this is true.

the other problem is that 'real' karate was intentionally supressed by its own masters in the early 20th century. master itosu (who i would call the grandfather of modern karate, if funakoshi is the father) began teaching karate to children as a way of keeping fit and developing discipline. as a result the real combat techniques of the kata were not taught. crippling locks and takedowns were taught as punches or blocks. soon enough this became karate-do and the real fighting art faded into obscurity. and so we have modern karate - an art that was intended for children. this is the reason why i quit my shotokan practice a few years ago.

historically, it was a do anyway. just like judo. Any art created after the meiji / tokugawa eras are considered do and not jutsu. shotokan therefore is a do, regardless of what is taught in it.

despite this the kata remain, and hence the real fighting art that karate used to be is still there. its just not taught in modern karate schools.

It is taught in some. But assuming that it is not, then there are NO karate schools today who teach the art of which you speak, as there is no single style that is still taught in the exact manner that it was all of those years ago.

[elbows_and_knees]

Do you think some schools might be putting ground work into the curiculum earlier than before because of the way MMA has popularised grappling? maybe potential students were being lost because they didn't perceive karate as a MA type that will provide them with these techniques?

yes. The tang soo do school I attended as a kid did not teach ground grappling, however they do today.

[alsey]

after all, karate has been in the west for only 60 years, and its taken that long to work out what on earth all those crazy kata movements are. the fact that MMA exploded around about the same time is mainly coincidence i think, though i think it has influenced karate as well.

what? The concept of mma has only been around since about 1995. And regardless of how long its been here, okinawan karate has always taught its grappling side...

yeah, exactly. around about 1995 MMA got big, and western karate masters started to work out what karate was about.

you won't find a double leg takedown in kata because as i said in my previous post, karate was never intended for fighting other martial artists. neither will you find feints or complicated punch combos. these things aren't necessary when defending yourself against an untrained attacker.

Not true. It's not taught because they didn't put it in the system. Judo teaches morote gari, which is a double leg. Not only that, but one of the most common street techniques you see is a tackle. Technically, a tackle and a double leg are drastically different, but in principle, they are the same.

i was talking about karate, not judo. i've never identified anything in a karate kata as a double leg takedown. if you have, i'm very interested to hear more.

tackling is common on the street between untrained fighters, but anyone any good at karate would have disabled an untrained opponent before they had the opportunity to tackle. karate mostly deals with the point just at the onset of physical confrontation. kata teaches you how to take the advantage imediately and disable your opponent before he can really do anything. it also teaches you to stay on your feet whenever possible.